Friday, February 20, 2004

News Story: Intellectual Property

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/02/17/0725242.shtml

EU Poised to Attack P2P File-Sharers

Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 17, @03:04AM

from the all-fronts-engaged dept.

Robin Gross of IP Justice (http://www.ipjustice.org) writes "The EU is about to vote on a controversial piece of legislation
(http://www.ipjustice.org/code/021404.html) that targets P2P file-sharing and other non-commercial infringements. The EU Intellectual Property Rights Directive creates a 'nuclear weapons' of law enforcement tools for intellectual property holders. It combines the most extreme enforcement provisions found throughout Europe and imposes them collectively onto all of Europe, for example England's Anton Pillar orders that permit recording industry executives to raid and ransack the homes of alleged users of file-sharing software or it's Mareva injunctions that freeze a defendant's bank accounts without a hearing. The vote in the EU plenary will likely be March 11, 2004 - watch the CODE site (http://www.ipjustice.org/code) for developments."